AIDS will become the world's most burdensome disease by 2030, according to predictions released today. Its predicted rise, which will overtake today's top problem of poor perinatal health (such as low birth weight), is being blamed on many countries' failure to impose proper prevention measures since the pandemic was first revealed.
The result is in sharp contrast to the same group's last prediction, made in 1996, that heart disease would be the top global health problem in 2020, with HIV a mere tenth in the list. "HIV is not going to come down unless we invest more in prevention efforts," says Colin Mathers, one of the researchers at the Geneva-based World Health Organization, who produced the prediction. Even if rates of HIV infection remain constant, growing populations in the developing world will propel it to the top of the rankings at a time when rates of other communicable diseases are set to improve.
According to the report, issued as part of the Global Burden of Disease project, and published in PLoS Medicine1, by 2030 AIDS could account for almost one in every eight years of life lost through death or disability...
Whole article: "http://www.nature.com/":[http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061127/full/061127-3.html]
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